Politics of Globalization
How to Judge Globalism
Amartya Sen
Indian Economist, Nobel Laureate


What is his argument?













A.  That globalization is not new, not necessarily Western



Globalization often confused with Westernization, Americanization

"over thousands of year, gloablization has contributed to the progress of teh world, through travel, trade, migration, spread of cultural influences, and dissemination or knowledge and understanding" (29)


ARound 100 AD,global reach of sceince, technology, and mathematics was changing the nature of the old world, but the dissemination then was...in the oppposite direction of what we see today" (29)

i.e. "East" to "West"


What are some examples he gives?



30 "...the Renaissance, the Enlighenment, and the Industrial Revolution were great achievements--and they occurred mainly in Europe and, later, in America.  Yet many of these developments drew on teh experience of the rest of the world, rather than being confined within the boundaries of a discrete Western civilization."






B. He argues that to construe it as "Westernization" politicizes it, creates antipathy toward it in the developing world
these countries "shoot themselves in the foot" by equating globalization with Westernization, imperialism, something to be resisted in favor of local ways of doing things




C.  He also asserts that many who criticize globalization ask the wrong question
i.e., they ask is the gap between rich and poor widening






D.  What question should critics of globalization (and all of us) be asking?




Is it just?  Could it be more so?

bottom of 31 "how to make good use of the remarkable benefits of economic intercourse and technological progress in a way that pays adequate attention to the interests of the deprived and the underdog."


similar to Jesuit preferential option for the poor




Nash and the Bargaining Problem
Problems of Collective Action
not better off with no cooperation; rather what is a fairer division of the benefits

"the ethical and human concerns that yield these questions call for serious reassessments of the adequacy of the national and global institutional arrangements that characterize the contemporary world and shape globalized economic and social relations" (34)


Sins of Omission and Commission


One Campaign

Jeffrey Sachs on "The End of Poverty"